1901
by CatsbytheGreat
Summary: A Time Lord and a certain immortal human end up meeting in a pub during a year in which nothing strange happens.


**Disclaimer: I do not own the characters. **

**Author's Note: A little bit pointless, but it just popped into my head and I had to write it. There's a hint of slash. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it!  
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**It was the year 1901. Two men walked into a pub, one half-an-hour after the other. There was really nothing significant about either one that anyone would notice, but in the greater scheme of things both were rather significant. For one thing, both were not supposed to be in the year 1901. For another thing, both were not quite normal.

One was an immortal human named Captain Jack Harkness. The other was a Time Lord who liked to call himself the Doctor.

At noon Captain Jack Harkness walked into the pub, dressed like a man from the early 1900's. His gaze swept the rather dark room before landing on an empty table. (It should be noted that most of the tables were empty; one was occupied by a sleeping man that Jack did not care to have a chat with.) With a sigh, he went to claim his spot.

The owner of the pub, working behind the bar, noticed this and also sighed. Two people at noon. He wondered whether it would be a slow day.

Captain Jack Harkness ordered himself a drink a few minutes later. "Something very alcoholic," he said, and it was provided. He went back to his table and sat down, sipping at his drink in what could only be described as a thoughtful manner, although Jack was not being very thoughtful at the moment. One could almost call him thoughtless.

He did this for another twenty minutes.

Then the Time Lord arrived.

The Doctor was not dressed like the people of 1901, but was wearing his standard striped suit and trainers, and a long brown coat. He took one look around the pub and noticed Jack, although the Doctor had already known that Jack would be there. He owed this to being a Time Lord; his senses were such that he knew certain things before they happened, and certain points and people in time stood out clearly to him. Jack was immortal, a fact in the universe. He practically burned in the Doctor's vision.

The Doctor swallowed his disgust for facts of the universe and decided to have a chat with Jack. After all, he liked Jack as a person. He just didn't like what Jack was. That wasn't Jack's fault, he knew, but still. Time Lord instincts couldn't be helped.

Jack looked surprised to see the Doctor. He swallowed another mouthful of his drink and then managed a hoarse, "Hello."

The Doctor grinned. He did that a lot. "Hello, Captain Jack. Having a nice drink, I see…"

"I'll buy a round for both of us," Jack offered.

"No." The Doctor laughed. "I don't trust either of us drunk together. Well, I don't trust you drunk. With me…drunk."

Jack opened his mouth to protest but ended up laughing instead. The Doctor had a point. Jack often ended up drunk with other drunk people, spending time with them in various beds, unclothed…

"So why are you here?" Jack asked, shaking certain inappropriate thoughts from his mind.

The Doctor's eyes sparkled and his lips quirked upwards in an expression that could only mean that he knew what Jack had been thinking. He did not, however, say anything to confirm this, but rather took Jack's bait and changed the subject. "I like 1901. Nothing ever happens in 1901, you know. Nothing that I know of. You go back to 2004, 2005, 2006…onward, and everything starts spiraling out of control. Aliens everywhere. Not 1901."

He said this quietly so that the pub owner would not hear, though the pub owner didn't seem to care anyway.

"Knowing you, something will happen in 1901 now that you've arrived," Jack murmured, taking another drink. "Things just can't go on normally with you around."

"Yes," the Doctor shrugged his shoulders, "I suppose I have that effect on people." He paused, lost in thought for a moment, and then turned his sharp gaze on Jack. "So what are you doing here? 1901, of all places? Don't you have that team of yours? Torchwood?"

Jack laughed. "I like to take a break every once in awhile. Wind down. See the sights, or the times, as you might say."

"Yeah, well, I don't like that," the Doctor said with a frown. "I can't have you running around throughout the whole of time and space without supervision. You don't know what can be changed and what can't be."

Jack shook his head at his companion's serious expression. "You need a break," he said. "How about that? Take a break with me for once. Have a little fun."

"I don't want to know what your definition of fun is," the Doctor said, "but I'll have you know that I _have_ taken breaks before and they've been very fulfilling."

Jack raised an eyebrow. "When?"

"There was the time I took Rose to New Earth although…no, the hospital incident ruined that, I supposed. Oh! But when I took Martha to London in Shakespeare's time, that was---well, it might have been a bit stressful, actually. But—when I went to the planet of Midnight and took that…never mind. That turned out rather badly." The Doctor glared at Jack with the look of a man who's lost and knows it but doesn't want to admit it quite yet. "Fine, you're right. But that isn't my fault. Trouble just seems to come to me."

"So why don't you just spend some time with me, here in 1901 when nothing at all happens?"

"Because I _know_ you, Jack. It was different when you were with me and Rose, and with me and Martha, but I know you and I know…" He cut himself off.

"You know what?" Jack asked, leaning forward a bit.

The Doctor sighed. "I know what you're thinking and what I'm telling you is that it won't happen. It's a bad idea. As a matter of fact—what time is it?"

Jack clenched his jaw in frustration. "Doctor…"

"The time?"

"One o'clock. Doctor—"

"Then what you really need to do," the Doctor continued, "is to get back to your team. That's where your responsibility lies. Never mind me. Come on." He stood up, a man with a purpose now. "No more of this. We'll get in the TARDIS and as soon as we set foot in modern Cardiff I'm disabling that teleportation device again."

Jack stood up and shook his head, a rueful smile taking form. "You always disable it and I always fix it. Why don't you just take it away?"

The Doctor looked as if the idea had never occurred to him. Then he shrugged. "Well, it did help us that one time when we were at the end of the universe. I guess I _could_ take it, but then again, I would have nothing to disable the next time I saw you."

"So you know that I'll always fix it," Jack said, laughing, "and that somehow that'll bring us together, and you'll have to disable it again. I think you let me keep it because you want to see me again. You know, instead of trapping me in one time."

"I let you keep it because I know you'll just make another one if I take it away," the Doctor said, his voice firm. "Who knows how that would turn out? Half of you could end up in 1300, for all I know! At least I'm certain this one works right." He shook his head. "Let's go. I have a strange feeling that the longer we stay here the more we affect time."

Jack simply laughed and followed the Doctor out of the pub.

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The owner, who had started listening when the Doctor mentioned something about the end of the universe, shook his head and wondered why people chose to get drunk at noon. Why not just have a nice _social _drink? Midday, and already the men were doing strange things like flirting with each other (because he _knew_ that the two of them had been flirting, he was sure of it) and talking about such nonsense as affecting time and travelling in time, and something about the end of the universe.

The things he saw and heard in his pub. He thought about writing a book.

Three days later, it was still 1901. But it was no longer 1901, the year that nothing out of the ordinary happened. London was plagued by the appearance of strange creatures that had kidnapped the owner of the pub the Doctor had visited.

The Doctor solved the problem the next day by retrieving said owner and ridding London of the aliens. He went back to his TARDIS to, rather regretfully, cross 1901 off his list of years in which nothing out of the ordinary happened.


End file.
